Data Control

Description

Data control has many aspects/axes:

* data: can you export it?

-o three major types of data; analysis may be different for each:

+++ private data: can others get out your personal/private data? can you take down old personal data that you've published? Potentially (like export control and the GPL) this can just be deferred to relevant national legislation?

+++ public, but personal, data: What about data that has been made public (for example, comments on a blog) but which are still in some sense identified with a particular individual?

+++ collaboratively created data: what about collaboratively created/owned data? e.g., a wikipedia page, or the implicit data of a myspace/facebook/linkedin personal network?

-o axis ranges from:

+++ can't export data

+++ can export data, but in an undocumented binary format

+++ can export data, but in an undocumented text format (e.g., CSV, XML)

+++ can export data in a documented format

+++ can export data in a standardized format

-o related: is there a source-available, freely-usable implementation of the service? (see, e.g., GPL v3's expanded system library exception for possibly analogous language)

identity: do you control your identity? e.g., can I use '[email protected]' to make it easier to leave gmail, or tieguy.org/blog/ to make it easier to leave wordpress.com? How do technologies like openid play into this?